Haven looked her up and down slowly. She was ravishingly beautiful. She was George Haven's property. He had made her what she was. He didn't even know her background, had purposely not delved into it. Forget about the past, he'd told her on the eve of their marriage. It's the future which counts. The future.... * * * * * "The future!" toasted Allen Vorhees, lifting his glass of Centaurian liquor. "To all our futures." The six Earthmen who knew Haven's secret drank with secret smiles. The smiles were for Louise--Louise who apparently knew nothing, Louise who looked up to her husband with the blind faith of a naive young girl. Haven raised his own glass. "May the future treat all of you as well as the past fifteen years have," he said, and drank. The smiles faded around the table. They'd drink to that, all right, Haven thought. But they didn't like the idea. A Centaurian waiter shuffled in with the first dinner course. Haven felt a mounting impatience. He wished the banquet was over already. He wished he could start planning what he had to do. He'd come to Centauri with no specific plan. He only knew that Drexell Tolliver's fifteen-years-frozen corpse was still waiting here on Centauri VII, to ruin him someday if he wasn't careful. Yes, Haven thought. I killed him. I murdered Drexell Tolliver. But it was for the good of the whole galaxy, couldn't they see that? Tolliver was an idealist, had wanted to give the huge uranium lode as a gift to the decadent Centaurians, who once had possessed a fine atomic civilization but had lost it a thousand years before Earthmen took to the stars. Then Drexell Tolliver said they could lease the mine back and work it. The galaxy would get its uranium, Centauri VII would get much-needed galactic credits, and the partnership of Tolliver-Haven would still run the mine. But this way, the way it worked out, thought Haven, the galaxy gets all the uranium from me. The whims of the strange Centaurians didn't matter. It was for the good of the galaxy, wasn't it? Haven smiled, remembering. Galaxy, hell. Why didn't he admit it, at least to himself? It was for the good of George Haven. And in the process, in bringing about that good, Drexell Tolliver had had to die. "... go out and visit the old mines," Angus MacCready was saying. The last course was served. Vorhees suggested they could start for the mines in the morning, and they all agreed. Even Louise seemed fascinated by the idea, and this surprised Haven. Louise had never showed much interest in his enterprises--except, now that he thought of it, for the Centaurian mine.